In the 1930's, there was a surge in the construction of reinforced concrete buildings. An improtant device used in such construction was generally known as a tie rod and spacer rod. The purpose of such a rod was to hold the casting barrier for poured concrete walls setting the thickness of the walls and holding these barriers in place to avoid ballooning. Patentable improvements in the spacer and tie rods considered ease of insertion and removal, versatility, low cost, and cosmetic effects. U.S. Pat. No. 1,907,618 for the form tie of Umback and Diack, issued May 9, 1933, is typical of said tie rods. In all these systems of concrete form molds using such tie rods, the forming hardware, including the forms themselves, were removed, leaving behind the unfaced concrete which had to be worked and then finished with some cosmetically appealing surface.
Modern construction techniques look to simpler systems than the classical tie rods. An objective is a tie rod that may be left on an integral part of the construction and minimizing cosmetic repairs to the finished product. Also, such tie rods should be versatile, easy to install, low cost, and amenable to easy concrete construction techniques. This invention discloses such a tie and form spacer to be used for composite concrete walls so that when the tie rods are removed with associated external hardware, the internal support structure remains within the wall and the facing material remains intact giving a pleasing cosmetic appearance without additional finishing work.